I’m reluctant to begin with another drawn out proclamation summarising the current state of affairs that plague the graduate job market, so how about a concise one instead.

Amidst a cloud of continued economic folly, unpaid internships and the shock horror of GCSEs grades falling for the first time in the exam’s 24-year history – one would assume the tough route is not to everyone’s taste. Unsurprisingly. Whichever side of the mobile political fence you pitch your tent, most would not argue that a healthy, competitive environment uncovers those most suitable for a career in their chosen field.

Countless articles dictate (or advise) which “buzz words” the ideal interviewee must utilise to impress, whilst evenings are elongated by carefully considered multiple-choice personality test answers. I find the importance of a candidate’s life-attitude and ambitions is often lost in the panic of being represented in the “perfect” light. Everyone is eventually bracketed into one jumbled mess. Granted this is by no means the sole fault of the employer, but a circumstance that has arisen from political and social failings over the past years.

I believe it is actually in the hands of the modern graduate to alter this saturated work environment. Take every opportunity to further yourself through being pro-active, and fervently express that desire and ambition to anyone you converse with. Much success I have so far had in my admittedly restricted career has occurred through such discussion. I am currently writing this from WEXO towers due to Robin and I connecting on musical ambition and his intrigue in how I have structured the next year for myself (naturally open to change). Another interview turned into an expressive and fruitful debate, which led to me receiving a number of useful contacts, and advise, despite not wanting to fully commit to the particular career path.

Hindsight is a wonderfully tortuous thing

I am a great believer in the notion of not beating around the bush – being direct with someone always goes a long way. On the back of that I am a 23 year-old graduate from the University of Leeds with a First in World & Popular Music. I often struggle when conjuring the drive within myself to proceed; yet I do not feel I lack ambition and my passion for Southeast Asian culture is leading me closer and closer to a move to Cambodia in order to pursue my love of journalism, music and social development. Hindsight is a wonderfully tortuous thing, thus I cannot stress enough the importance of expressing a genuine interest in your career choice and never being caught up in gaining ‘required’ experience for experience’s sake.

One anecdote I would like to conclude this blog with is how I came about my internship at Songlines music magazine, and why it is a prime example of what I have so far stated.

Songlines, Glastonbury & Persistence

I had interviewed the Cambodian-American group Dengue Fever over Skype for my dissertation in early 2011, and naturally decided to go and meet them at Glastonbury that year in the Songlines tent (West Holts stage). One thing led to another and with a beer in hand I got talking to the publisher of the magazine about who I was and why an internship at the magazine would be a fantastic opportunity.

Left at that, I went on a rather extended post-graduation holiday and returned in September to get stuck into the rest of my life. I was then based in Somerset, and emails to the magazine fell largely on disinterested eyes to my great disappointment. Unaware of the unstoppable flood of emails magazines have to deal with at the time, yet determined that this magazine was the perfect environment for me and a reason to move back to London, I decided to get archaic and send a letter. Behold! Two days and a phone call later and I was on my way to London to meet the assistant editor. I was explicitly told that this was the best move I could have ever made and immediately demonstrated my pro-active nature that is so desired within the media industry.

Networking

Nine months later and I continue to reap the rewards from the placement. Networking is a terribly over-used term, but still means so much in this industry. Expressing your related interests or perhaps even more importantly convincing someone of something new is your ticket to another opportunity. I continue to work at festivals, gigs, artist signings and events where I am able to connect with members of the public and music press. Nothing is more invigorating than going into work everyday to something you enjoy. Through working at Songlines and the opportunities that have occurred since (record labels and artist management), I have become very apt with InDesign, Photoshop, CRM/SEO management, website and social media development – none of this I would have forced myself to learn at home alone over such a short period of time. From a music perspective, the amount of new musical treats I have been introduced to is already uncountable.

I have not said anything that could be classed as a euphoric and game-changing statement, perhaps this blog even verges on common sense, but the opportunities do exist. Granted necessity dictates and money does not allow everyone to do exactly what one desires at that specific time, but this should not ever hinder ambition.

Ed Craggs

You’ve heard WEXO Founder, Robin Kennedy’s, take on unpaid internships, this week our social media team give you their take…

Upon leaving education with degrees or the equivalent, graduates are ideally looking to take on their first full time employment contract. Unfortunately all candidates, regardless of the number of degrees, certificates or badges they have, are being flung into the worst job market since the 1940s! The result of this is that internships are fast replacing graduate schemes as the first rung on the employment ladder.

However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Many graduates find this transitional period useful. Some use it to gain experience in an industry they know they want to work in. Others trial various sectors to help work out what it is they want to do as a career long term.
The difficulty arises with the issue of pay.

A large number of companies offer interns a sum way below the NMW or worse, nothing at all! This is for a number of reasons, the main ones being:

   1)  In the economic climate, the company is trying to save money by getting an intern in to help with workload instead of hiring an additional member of staff on a salary.
   2)  The demand is there. So many graduates are so desperate for the experience and are unaware of their other options that they are willing to work for free.

Priced out of applying

These underpaid internships are actually prejudicial against those who can’t afford to effectively ‘not earn’ for 1 – 3 months at a time, which is A LOT of people! This is an issue, which has been discussed by parliament for a number of years. The ridiculous thing about this system is that no one really benefits from it. By pricing people out of applying, these companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Who’s to say that the next Steve Jobs isn’t be amongst the group of talent that didn’t apply for the position due to financial limitations? It really is a lose/lose situation!

What does WEXO believe?

This is where WEXO step in. We believe it is only right that if you, as an individual, are adding value to a company, you should be paid at least the National Minimum Wage (approximately £210 a week). Anything below this is intern abuse! This is what we tell all the companies that post positions on WEXO. Just because below average pay is the norm, it doesn’t make it morally OK.

Educating the employers is half the battle. WEXO now want to spread the word amongst graduates, that there are great internships, with great businesses that are willing to pay you what you deserve. They do exist, so avoid being exploited and look for them. WEXO work very hard to find these types of roles for you so make the most of them!

Have a read of some other blogs about the internship debate here:

Intern Nation? How Do We Skill Up Young People To Get Jobs?
The Ever-Present Dilemma Of Unpaid Internships…

The Olympics. You can’t get away from it. Everywhere you look Jessica Ennis is bearing her incredible abs, Tom Daley’s showing off his wares in the tightest speedos imaginable and Mo Farah’s running further than most people travel to work in less time than it takes to eat a bowl of cereal.

Pre-Olympics, I’ll admit, I was one of those ‘not bothered about London 2012, it’ll only ruin my TV viewing for the summer’ cynics, but after the incredible opening ceremony put on by thousands of volunteers and watched by over 27 million people in the UK (pretty much half the population), it was hard not to become completely captivated by the Great British Olympic Spirit.

Add to that the fact that all the TVs in my office (I work at ITV, so there’s a lot) are now permanently showcasing all the best Olympic action (even though it’s all on the BBC. Slightly awkward), I am now a fully-fledged Olympic enthusiast! So much so in fact that I’m considering pitching the idea of ‘Annual London Olympics’ to President of the IOC, Mr Jacques Rogge.

As I write this Great Britain is third in the medals table behind the formidable forces of China and the USA and I couldn’t be prouder. Not at all bad for a little country. A little country with a BIG heart.

So imagine my excitement when, after answering a question on Twitter from @WEXO, I won a pair of tickets to the Olympic Beach Volleyball! Are you imagining the excitement? OK, now double it.

The question and answer that won me the tickets and my Olympic experience

So after a quick ‘how do we get there and who’s playing’ bit of research, I decided, as it appeared to be Men’s volleyball, to take my mum along with me. After all, she’d enjoy seeing young, fit, men in shorts leaping around in the sand far more than my boyfriend would.

Friday evening rolled around and Mum and I were greeted by the lovely Robin and Ben from WEXO at a wine bar in London. Two glasses of champagne later (thanks boys!) we set off across Trafalgar Square toward Horse Guards parade and, after a minor ticket hiccup, we were into the Olympic venue.

My first thoughts were how much the venue reminded me of a music festival, with an electric atmosphere, overpriced food stalls, and portable toilets (although these were by far the poshest portable toilet blocks I’d ever been in, complete with sinks and hand dryers!). And the festival atmosphere continued right into the evening. The volleyball was amazing and my team (Brazil, because mum and I tossed for it and I got Brazil whilst she got Spain) won! BRAAAAAAAAAZIL! There’s that excitement again.

There were several Mexican waves occurring at regular intervals, music and chants and the whole crowd was really into the spirit of the games. After the first match we located some more food and wine (why is it that at events like this you always seem to be ten times hungrier than at any other time?) and returned to the stands just as the second match was about to get underway. Russia vs Austria. Womens. Oh. Having told my boyfriend he “probably wouldn’t be that bothered about coming because it was all men’s volleyball”, I had a feeling he wouldn’t be too happy finding out that Mum and I were now watching gorgeous women in bikini bounce about in the sand. So naturally I text him a photo of the scene so he could see what he was missing.

The evening went by in a flash, both Mum and I had the time of our lives and I am extremely grateful to WEXO for giving me the change to get my hand on tickets to an Olympic event. So, to anyone who thinks Twitter is just full of celebrity stalkers and statuses about what people have had for breakfast, think again, I’ve won competitions and found jobs, advice and the WEXO website though the site.

Anyway, thanks once again to the WEXO team for an amazing experience, I’m now off to find out how the Brazilian’s are getting on in their Olympic Beach Volleyball journey.

Come on BRAZIIIIIL!

Vicki Greenfield

This morning at around 1am we went live with some major changes to the way WEXO works and in the coming weeks you’ll start to see the look and feel of WEXO change too.

* CANDIDATES will no longer have to pay £10 to identify companies and apply for opportunities.

* COMPANIES will now be able to choose between paying up front to advertise internships & jobs through the WEXO network or engaging our experienced team to help them find the best recruits.

* CAREER GUIDANCE is now just a click away.

When we started WEXO as ‘Work Experience Online’ in 2007, we set up a company that would focus on democratising access to work experience and encouraging Generation Y to ‘do something different with your day’ (see launch video!) We had many excellent contacts in aspirational organisations (largely in the creative industries) but their core problem was receiving and rifling through too many CVs for the opportunities they had to offer. They were interested in us finding them graduates and using our network to fill higher level roles too but their main problem was filtering out the strong candidates from a mass of applications.

In the beginning (when man created site), we looked hard at where the value in our offering was and,uncommonly, made it free to post roles on the site (to get as much ‘content’ as possible). We allowed people to search for free but only allowed those who joined us as members (paying a one off £10 Membership fee) to identity the companies behind the roles on offer and apply for them. We also invested a lot of resources into building our ‘filtration technology’ which matches candidates with opportunities and remains one of the key USPs of WEXO. It allows us to rate candidates and our companies to rank applicants.

At the same time as entering this market, we subconsciously entered the ‘unpaid Internships’ debate (most recent thoughts on that here, here and here!). Beyond question, this has shaped our development as a company and dictated our direction. As staunch supporters of people paying for value (hence interns – or in my other working capacity, musicians!) it was only natural that we would eventually start charging companies for finding them good people. But as we have found it easier to place interns and graduates than to to improve access to work experience in its purest form (SHORT, UNPAID placements for YOUNG people – where they derive the lion’s share of the value), so it has made sense to move away from charging our users to apply for roles on the site. We always offered paying members career guidance however and remain committed to this. We are also delighted to say that we have recently been joined by Bella Connelly and Tray Durrant from Tinker Tailor who are happy to offer refined 30 minute careers and CV advice sessions to anyone on WEXO for a much reduced fee of £50. We will be exploring other ways to add to this offer in due course and it will become a focus of the site but if you are interested please email:info@wexo.co.uk

The most consistent proactive feedback has always been that it is unfair to be charged £10 to apply for a job but in some ways, that was what our key stakeholders (our companies) have required. They only wanted to see considered applications and we found that only those that really wanted the role would pay £10 to apply. We concede that this wasn’t how everyone saw it!

Many have identified the two biggest problems in the recruitment industry today as too many people applying for too many jobs (‘Shotgunning‘) and not enough applicants receiving responses or feedback (‘Freeloading‘). A lot of this is driven by the Internet economy itself which has broken down many barriers for the better but also created expectation whilst failing to manage it. Our response now is to restrict people to applying for a maximum of 3 roles at any one time (and focus ambition) whilst ensuring that all applicants get a response of sorts within 14 days (we have much work to do in this space and are continually open to feedback).

We also want to ensure that we are working with similarly minded companies – ones that want to invest in finding talent and driving UK PLC out of the recession. From now on, we still allow you to sign up for free but offer you a range of options to promote your opportunities to our growing user base of over 10,000 and a partner network that stretches to up to 750,000 (prices from £135 to £750). Through Step, host businesses have access to a wider network of upto 750,000 students and graduates. And for those of you that simply want us to help find you strong candidates, we look forward to hearing from you and will respond to postings within 24 hours to discuss the best course of action (more info here). We are proud of the work that we have done of late and are excited about some of the new things in the pipeline:

* Finding, recruiting and payrolling over 60 graduates to work with UPS at the London 2012 Olympic Games with STEP and their Internship programmes.

* Placing interns and permanent employees in roles at exciting start-ups including Housebites and Fanatix and more traditional companies like Henry Cookson Travel and Claudia Bradby Jewellery.

* Running searches for permanent roles at big names like Purple PR, Badoo and MiH Jeans.

Whilst we remain believers in Freemium business models (from the Financial Times to Spotify), as with internships and work experience, it remains a question of what is free and how much?

Robin Kennedy, Co-founder & CEO, WEXO

Thank you to all our users for their support and patience as we enact the next phase of changes on WEXO. Please keep letting us know what improvements you want us to make.